1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an illuminating apparatus for illuminating an object and also to a recording apparatus making use of the illuminating apparatus.
The term recording apparatus in this specification is used to include various types of apparatus such as printers, electronic typewriters, facsimiles, copying apparatus and so forth. The present invention can effectively be carried out in apparatus having both reading means and recording means, e.g., copying machines which reads an image on an original and records on a recording medium the image in accordance with the data obtained through the reading of the original.
2. Related Background Art
The current rapid progress in data-oriented industry has promoted development of various types of data processing systems which in turn is accompanied by development of various types of recording apparatus suited to the data processing systems.
Reading or recording of a multi-color image with any of known optical systems encounters a difficulty in illuminating a minute region with lights of different spectral characteristics while switching these lights at a high speed. Thus, the known recording apparatus are still unsatisfactory in terms of the reading/recording speed and the quality of the recorded image.
To overcome the above-described difficulty, the present applicant has already proposed an illuminating apparatus which is capable of illuminating a tiny spot while switching between different lights having different spectral characteristics, as well as a recording apparatus which makes use of the illuminating apparatus. The present applicant has already filed applications for patents in Japan on such illuminating apparatus and recording apparatus. These applications are Japanese patent application Nos. 61-93368 (application date Apr. 24, 1986), 61-212802 (application date Sept. 11, 1986), 61-212803 (Sept. 11, 1986), 61-223726 (application date Sept. 24, 1986) and 61-280738 (application date Nov. 27, 1986). On the basis of Convention Priorities on these Japanese patent applications, the applicant also has filed a patent application in the United States, as U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 041,043 (filing date Apr. 21, 1987).
The invention of this application is a further improvement in the invention proposed in the above-mentioned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 041,043.